Pushing past the last plateau

I've always struggled with my weight. I probably always will.

It's weird, because on one hand, I don't particularly want to focus on it. I've never wanted to make a big deal out of my weight, because I don't think that it's a defining characteristic in people.

The problem with that is that for me -- a person who has a pretty big appetite and a bit of a lazy attitude when it comes to exercising (that's a little harsh but it's not far from being 100 percent true) -- applying that "no big deal" attitude let me balloon up from chubs to seriously overweight. I can't even look. But you can.

This photo's a little forgiving, but it was taken in late July 2004, right after I graduated college and a few months before I hit a peak weight of 237 pounds.

(If you've heard me complain about this before, skip to after the ellipsis below. That's where the real meat of this post is anyway. This middle part is just background.)

I was always hovering around 220 pounds during college. I ate like shit, exercised only by biking to class, playing intramural sports and walking around town, and I rarely turned down a chance at drinking a beer.

Honestly, I don't think that all these things made me a bad person: I was just having fun and carefree in college, I didn't have the outwardly destructive tendencies that some others had when they were thrust into all that freedom. I was pretty much a happy-go-lucky dude who was simply fat.

Things got worse in grad school, because the work intensified and I completely ignored my body. When it finally hit me that I had to reign in my horrendous eating habits and lose a lot weight, it really sucked to confront the fact that I had let myself go.

But it worked.

I gave up soda, mayonnaise and a lot of the goodies that I'd afforded myself liberally through the years. I worked out (fiendishly for me, an acceptable amount for others). The weight started coming off.

But as anyone who's tried to lose weight will tell you, plateaus are the WORST. That's when you work just as hard as you've always worked but the weight seems to no longer come off. For me, those magical plateau numbers were at 220, 200, 190 and 170. I blasted through 220 with slightly more work, through 200 with a fluke virus that caused me to drop 10 pounds in 2 days and 190 by simply picking it up.

...

I haven't gotten past 170, and I've never been more frustrated with this weight loss thing than I have been this year. Before, people were really supportive of my weight loss goals. Now, most think I'm fine.

I appreciate the compliments, but I want to be in good shape, not in good enough shape. That's why this past week I did something some might consider extreme: I joined a boot camp.

Boot Camp Las Vegas is certainly the strangest exercise program I've ever been a part of.

I joined on Tuesday, running day, which involved running three miles around a track, windsprints and stairs, all with just brief moments of stopping. Wednesday was legs day, which I thought was weird after running day. It involved me doing a buttload of lunges, squats and insane exercises for my legs that were already a little sore from the day before. Yesterday, arms and upper body.

Today, I climbed a mini-mountain. I'll get exact figures on Monday, but it was higher than the peak that holds the air towers for Las Vegas' TV stations. It was all loose rocks and desert terrain. I'm scared of heights, but I couldn't think about it at all and at one point it became less about getting a workout than about getting up and down the damn thing without getting myself killed or falling on my ass too much.

When I got up to the peak, I realized that this is what working out and fitness is really about: pushing yourself to do things that you normally wouldn't even think of and also to work harder than you've ever worked before.

The girl who started Boot Camp LV is pretty inspiring. At about 5-foot-3 and about 120 pounds, she doesn't seem to have any fat on her body whatsoever. That wasn't the case two years ago, when she was 180 pounds.

Julie brings out the best in her class, not by being nice to them, but by being a living example of what she believes and therefore brings to others. When I talk to her, I believe she's able to help me and push me to do something that I've struggled with for years.

Today, when I got down the mountain (I was one of just a handful that went all the way to the top because it was an extra long session, about 1:20 total), I was talking to Julie and I let it slip that I didn't have to work today since I have Fridays and Saturdays off. She said, "Nice, you should come back out at 9:30 or 6!"

The rule is you can double, triple or quad up each day on classes without paying extra.

This morning I didn't think I could climb a mountain at all. In about an hour, I'm going to find out if I can do it twice.

Watch an oversimplified version of what I'm doing here: Fox 5 news story

Wish me luck. Sure, this is about the wedding, but Maryté and I are going to do this after we get married too. Because fitness isn't a pursuit for one day, it's about changing your lifestyle.